Monday, October 28, 2013

Fire on the Mountain 50K...and War

I will post more about it after the results are up (unavailable as of this writing). It was a tough race for me but provided some very valuable lessons.

Now, while I was happily running my heart out in the wild mountains of western Maryland, former vice-president Dick Cheney was on a Sunday morning show, uttering some chilling words (via Firedoglake, here):

On ABC’s ‘This Week’, host George Stephanopoulous asked Cheney about the effectiveness of diplomatic talks in Iran.
“Is military action against Iran inevitable?” he said.

“I have trouble seeing how we’re going to achieve our objective short of that,” Cheney said.

Maybe the Iranians are playing us about the nuclear ambitions, making nice and sounding reasonable. But when you are talking about war--as in WAR, you know, where real people die--I'd like to think that the Very Serious People who run this country would be a tad more interested in listening and giving the benefit of the doubt, as opposed to immediately ratcheting up the firepower rhetoric.

In other words, talk first, and if that fails THEN begin to make very cautious noises in conjunction with the UN about the knuckle sandwich school of problem-solving (as well as all other potential non-lethal options by the world community).